The continued cost reduction in miniaturized electronics and memory storage has lead to the development of media players that store high volumes of media in small spaces. The use of small cassette tape players has largely been supplanted by CD players, and more recently, MP3 players.
An advantage of the MP3 players is that can store thousands of songs, photographs, books on tapes, and other digital files in a very small space, and provide a user with the ability to download songs one at a time or in groups from various music download services, and to literally carry around a whole music library and photo album in a user's pocket or backpack.
One popular brand of MP3 player is the ipod®, offered by Apple Computer, of Cupertino, Calif. The ipod® player is about the same size as a pack of standard playing cards. To listen to the device, headphones or earphone which are wired to a plug are plugged into a jack on the portable media player. Since some users prefer not to have any wires dangling from the media player to the headphones or earphones, various wireless headphones and earphones have been developed. These wireless headphones have a transmitter portion that connects to the media player, and transmits a signal via radio frequency (RF) to the headphones or earphones.
While wireless headphones and earphones may free the user from being tethered with wires to the media player, some of the prior wireless headphones and earphones can be relatively heavy and bulky and place excessive weight and stress on the user's head or ears. Moreover, these wireless headphones and earphones frequently do not give users the ability to control anything other than the volume to the headphones, and the volume control may not be conveniently accessible. Furthermore, operating the various functions of the portable media player without accessing a control panel and/or switches on the portable media player cannot be accomplished. Thus, while users may be freed from having their headphones tethered by wires to the portable media player, they still must directly access the portable media player's control panel and other switches to control the signal that goes to the headphones.
There accordingly remains a need for a wireless headphone kit for media players and a comfortable to wear wireless headphones unit, that permit a user to easily control the media player without directly accessing its control panel.